 Live from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in our nation's capital. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Eileen Jemismith, Eileen Jemismith, sorry, the CEO and co-founder of Vizalytics Technology. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure to be here. So let's start by telling our viewers a little bit about Vizalytics. There's a story there about how you founded it. Thank you, so the mission of Vizalytics is enabling change with data. And we saw tremendous opportunity in open and public available data to say, let's make a difference for communities. And the whole reason why we started was in 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit my hometown of Staten Island. And I saw firsthand digital divide. People need access to information. It's not put together in a format that they can use, but it actually is there. So I said, we've got to do something to make a difference. Our first product was a mobile app for shopkeepers. We had thousands of users throughout New York City. And then that led on to our first enterprise client being the city of New York. So the mobile app for shopkeepers could do what? What did it do? It let you know everything that was going on outside and around your business that can make a difference to your bottom line. So imagine all you had to do is business name, business address, I'm going to tell you, here's your risk for fines. Here's when there's going to be public works. Here's when someone's filed for a different permit, et cetera. And shopkeepers loved it because we didn't have to do anything to get that information. They told me exactly what I needed to know and you made it really easy to share. And now you are a woman founder, a female founder with a she builds t-shirt on and an AWS hero medallion. Tell me a more about this. Absolutely. So it is a distinct privilege to be an AWS community hero. Community heroes are evangelists for the community where we're talking about how can we build and create more diverse and inclusive communities. I'm privileged and honored to be the only female hero in the Australia, New Zealand region. So I'm determined to say, how can we support more women? How can we support more underestimated founders and tech developers? So we have this whole series called She Builds on AWS. We've got events in Sydney, Melbourne, soon to be in Perth, et cetera. And that's how we're doing more for community. And as a community hero, how can I find more voices who aren't me? Give them a platform to say, we need to hear what you're building and what you're doing. And how can we all support one another as we want to build on on AWS? So what is it to be like at an event like this, where as you said, you're the only female community hero here. How are you getting together, collaborating, learning, and how are best practices emerging? And what are those best practices? So first off, I want to mention that we have the first ever developers lounge here in the main hall, which is great because we need to see that here in public sector. And having those opportunities to kind of meet and greet and talk with folks, hey, you're working on this as well. Tell me more about what you're doing. Let me surface out like what kind of solution you're doing. That's where like all of the energy and the excitement happens because then you start to discover like, oh, I didn't know folks are working on this and this. Hey, we've got the same problem. And especially in public sector, where folks so often have the challenge of different silos. Hey, I didn't know what I didn't know. How can we bring them all together? So seeing that here in public sector, where we can champion, you've got all of these different folks who are working together is just a wonderful opportunity. And what are you hearing? I mean, in the sense of the big theme here is about government, IT modernization in the public sector. The public sector, for better or for worse, has a reputation of being a little slower, a little more antiquated to, but and yet there's certain divisions of the government in particular and educational institutions that are incredibly innovative. Absolutely. I mean, how, where do you think things stand right now? So there's absolutely positive change. And I like to celebrate here are the leaders and here are the folks that are doing more. Yes, public sector does, for good reasons in some cases, take a long time to say, how do we want to change? Do we feel safe with this change, et cetera. But then you see pockets of excellence. So I'm currently based in Sydney, Australia. Transport for New South Wales is one of our clients and I am honored and excited by all that they're doing where at the executive level, you have buy-in and you have support. You have support for saying, we need organizational change. You have support for saying, let's do proof of concept. Let's do these explorations. Let's actually have a startup accelerator hub. So we as public sector can interact with startups and early stage founders or university students to make that kind of difference. When you see that, I mean, that's part of why, okay, great, we're in Australia now because there's this energy and action and a willingness to move. So that's where I think, look to those centers of excellence and say, how can we do that within our organization and what can we do better? And so we're not in, are you saying, but not saying that we're not seeing quite that energy in the U.S. Or what are the differences? Well, again, it depends district by district, right? So different municipalities have different challenges, different size, et cetera. When you look at things, for example, in San Francisco where you had the startup and residence program started off, small cohort, five or six companies, great. Now how can we scale that program and make it national where they had something like 700 applications for something maybe a cohort of 50 or 60 companies that are working. That's where you start to see there's an energy that's flowing through. So I think the opportunity for change comes in that kind of cross collaboration. And if you have an event like this, we've got public sector folks from all over the world saying, really interesting, oh, you feel my pain. How can we work together on this? What's your team doing? How can I learn from that? How can I kind of take that back to my teams? Or where can we think about some of the harder problems of organizational change? And what do we do if we don't have that executive champion? How can we start to get there? I think that's the kind of energy and opportunity of all the things we're seeing here at Public Sector Summit. But as you said, it's also looking, for the rest of us, looking at these centers of excellence, see what they're doing, see how they're experimenting, getting those proofs of concept, and then saying, hey, we got something here. Let's see if we can replicate this. Absolutely, and within public sector, when you have that opportunity to say, and look at how we're doing this in London, look at how we're doing this in Toronto, look at how we're doing this in Sydney, and how we're doing this in Melbourne, then you can suddenly go back to New York and say, okay, great, we do have these others examples. It is being done, so we can use that as a guide for what we want to do as we continue to innovate. What are some of the most exciting things that you're seeing here, some new public sector initiatives and technology services that you think are really going to be game changers? How much time do we have? Well, first off, the energy to, we want to collaborate. We want to be more agile. We want to make a difference. The sense that this event has grown from just a small cohort to 1,000, a couple of thousand. Now I believe there's something like 15,000 attendees. 18,000 according to Teresa Carlson. But think about the fact that we're all willing to be here together. That's a line in the sand that we need to be able to do more. So it's not about a particular technology per se, but a willingness to say, we need to be here. We need to face these problems. We've got this challenge of, should we bring these legacy systems over? Should we think about how we want to work together in public-private partnerships? That we can all kind of come together and start to work at this? And then also think about, we've got public sector summits throughout the world, right? Please join us at Canberra Summit. That's going to be going on in late August. You've got Tokyo summit going on right now. So it's not just all here in DC. You're starting to see these clusters move out and that's really wonderful and exciting for us. So it's wonderful and exciting on the one hand. And yet this summit is taking place against a backdrop where we're seeing a real backlash against technology. The public sentiment has really soured. Regulators and lawmakers are sharpening their blades and saying, hey, maybe we should pay attention more to what these technology companies are doing and how just how powerful they've become in all of our daily lives. I mean, where do you feel, what's the sentiment that you're hearing on the ground, particularly as a founder yourself? Well, I think that's where knowledge can be powerful. Can we empathize with some of the challenges? I hope that all companies choose to act with integrity, not necessarily that they do, but there are a lot of folks saying, well, we need to be able to do more. From a policy perspective, how can tech companies partner with policy makers who may not understand how all of these technologies work and what they're capable of or not capable of? We need more clarity on that because I think that's where it becomes a black box of conflict. And if you can change it to say, okay, this is challenges that you have with facial recognition or sentiment analysis or what have you, well, let's really think about what do the systems today do? What are the guardrails that we need to put in? And how can we work as partners with policy makers so it's not just driven by lobbyists, but there's actually an understanding of, so this is the implication of these systems, right? You're the unintended consequences. Absolutely. If we can come back to New York for a second, New York City has one of the strongest open data laws in the nation. Part of that's because Gail Brewer, the borough president of Manhattan, said we need to kind of formalize this, how do we put this together? She didn't come from a tech background, but she saw a problem that needed to be solved and she said, how do we put this together and how do we get the right folks to the table to think about doing this in a really scalable, meaningful way? So the more that we see those opportunities in that well said backdrop of tensions and concerns, that's how we move forward, facing those hard questions. It's not Rome was built in a day, it's not. It's going to take us a lot of time and there's a lot of unanswered ethical questions as well that we have to start really thinking deeply about. But it starts, as you said, with making the data visible and then getting more voices who- Making it visible and also understanding what's not included in the data, right? Coming back to when I started my company, there was a lot of, but this isn't being counted and what happens when you're saying, I'm making a bias based on this particular data set that leaves out this whole community over here? Can we think about what's not included in that data or how the data collection itself or the organization itself is changing things? So that's why coming back to you need more female founders, you need more underrepresented populations to have those voices of have you considered this, have you given representation to this particular group, to this population? Without doing that, then you're just reinforcing the same silos and the same biases and we have an obligation to our community and to one another to change that. So I know you have a keen interest in diversity issues and as you're talking about bringing in more women and more underrepresented minorities to lend their perspective to these very important issues that are shaping our lives. What are, how do we solve this problem? I mean, technology has such a bro culture and we're seeing the problems with that. Well, so first off, from a founder's point of view, you have to know when not to listen. You have to know when not to let someone shut you down because they'll say. The noise. Oh my goodness, the noise of we've got ageism, we've got sexism, we've got racism, we've got elitism. I went to Brooklyn College, I'm very proud of that fact. I had venture capitalists say, I don't want to invest in you, you're too old and you didn't go to pedigree school. Well, guess what? My company is still here. Some of the folks you've invested in, they've folded a long time ago. So part of it is a willingness to drive forward, but it's also building networks of support, right? So coming back to being a community hero, how can I elevate these voices and say we need to give them an opportunity to be here? We need to change this. So part of it is we want more seats at the table, but you know what? If that table's not going to welcome me, I'm creating a whole nother table over here where we can start to have that cluster effect. And that's where the dedication and the tenacity and you see things like we power tech where we're really looking to elevate those voices. That change can't happen unless we keep doing that and unless the folks are like, but this is how we've always done it, are willing to say actually, shortcoming here, let's think about changing this and broadening the conversation. Is that changing though? I mean, we're talking a lot about how this, there's the new generation of workers coming up who do think differently and they do grow up with this stuff and they say, we don't need this red tape. Well, why is this taking so long? You know, they're impatience and maybe a more willingness to listen to other voices. I mean, are you seeing a difference? Absolutely, I'm seeing a difference for sure. That doesn't mean sexism, ageism, elitism has gone away. It has not, but you're starting to see again, clusters of excellence. And I think if you really want to make change, you focus on where that traction is. You use that as your foothold to build and scale and then start to be able to do more because that's the only way. We've got some barriers that for other founders, I empathize with how insurmountable it can be. But if you've got that dedication, if you refuse to be defined by what someone else says you are or what your company is capable of being and then you find those great partners to say, let's do this together, the whole conversation changes. Aileen Gemma-Smith, those are great words to end on. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Absolute pleasure. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have much more of theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington DC coming up in just a bit.